Author: Ridley

Howdy, These remain difficult times, and are likely to for quite a while now. I simply don’t have enough in the tank to rage against all that is wrong with the current state of affairs, so I thought I’d share a few things that make me happy, or distract me, or are just interesting. In case you were wondering, the image above has nothing to do with any of this. It just made me smile. The Crafsman If there is one thing on this list you check out, make it The Crafsman’s YouTube channel (linked above). The Crafsman, as you might imagine, makes videos about making crafts, but that description seriously undersells the appeal. He’s often compared to Bob Ross or Mr. Rogers because he’s got a wonderful, gentle voice and he’s relentlessly positive, but The Crafsman doesn’t really sound like either of them. His videos are genuinely informative and a delight to listen to. I cannot recommend him highly enough. Welcome to Night Vale WTNV has perhaps the easiest elevator pitch in the history of podcasts: H.P. Lovecraft meets NPR. If that description appeals to you, then go check it out right now. If it doesn’t? Then we’re just wired differently, I guess. WTNV at its best is gently weird and weirdly hilarious. The voice of WTNV is Cecil Baldwin, and I’m not sure it would work without him. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to. Q.I. Q.I. is a panel show hosted by Stephen Fry featuring four other comedians discussing trivia and general knowledge in the silliest way possible. It’s ostensibly a game show, although the scoring format is more about providing interesting answers (“Q.I.” stands for “quite interesting”) than obvious ones (which are almost always incorrect, anyway). No one skips from highbrow wordplay to vulgar puns as easily as Fry, but the guests make a game effort at keeping up. Keen shoes Comfortable and indestructible. They ain’t pretty. They’re not especially cheap. But if you want a shoe what will last you for a decade of hiking on rocks, or snow, or water, or whatever weird thing the universe throws at you, this is the only choice. Project Fi Ugh, Google, am I right? I’m not a big fan of the privacy-destroying monolith that seems to have its fingers in every aspect of my life. But, I will tell you this: Project Fi is the best cell phone service I’ve ever used. They have a “virtual SIM” thingie that allows them to use the best signal available from four different networks, so you will have signal in abundance. It’s cheap, too. My average bill is under $40 a month (it’s a pay-as-you-use-it plan, but with pretty generous terms). You do have to use one of only six phones, but there are some really good ones available. Korg Volcas (You have to scroll down a little to get to the Volca series.) These innocent little boxes, about the size of a Stylophone, are some serious kit for making music at very low prices. I have the Beats and the Sample and paid under $100 each for ‘em used. They’re not as powerful as some of the computer-based drum machines and synths, but there’s a tremendous satisfaction in twiddling with the knobs and getting crazy good sounds. I could talk for days about how fun they are and how they’re built to work together and with the Minilogue, but honestly? If you’re into making music, you really ought to get your hands on some of these. The value-to-fun ratio is off the charts. The Wicked + The Divine This comic, by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen, is the pop-art masterpiece of the decade. It’s not my favorite book by this team (that would be Phonogram), but it’s the best and the most ambitious by a wide margin. Every ninety years, twelve young people become gods, manifestations of one or another ancient deity. It’s a (mostly) different mix every time through. After two years, they die. No one really knows why. That’s the setup. It’s a high-wire act from start to finish and…no, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Just enjoy the ride. The Battle of Polytopia This is a little 4x game for mobile devices. I downloaded it last February and immediately thought “Gee, this is way too simple to be interesting.” Danged if I’m not still playing it regularly. It doesn’t take terribly long to play, and the basics are super easy to pick up, but there are a ton of subtle wrinkles that give it an absurd amount of replay value. I love honing strategies to a fine edge, though, so your mileage may vary. Office Master Sit To Stand Work Stool Not the catchiest name, is it? After several decades of working in an office, my back was starting to feel the strain. I did a little testing and determined that I was most comfortable in a not-quite-standing position, with my butt on an angled stool and my legs still supporting some of the weight. I tried this with some conventional bar stools and, um, I broke a lot of conventional bar stools since the weight was all at the front of the saddle. I found this sucker online and it was exactly what I needed. People look at me funny now (I mean, they did anyway, but you get the idea), but I haven’t had any back pain from sitting in four years now. Yaupon This one’s a life-saver. I had to cut down on my coffee consumption, but I wasn’t going to completely give up on caffeine because, well, because I like caffeine. I didn’t even know what yaupon was before I tried it at the farmer’s market. I tasted a sample out of pity, but holy smokes, it’s good. It tastes like tea but without any of the bitterness, much the way cold brew tastes like drip coffee without the acid. It’s local, it’s sustainable, and it’s the only north American plant that has caffeine in it. You owe it to yourself to try it. That’s it for now, because ten seems like a nice number to stop on. I just wanted to share some of the things that I like, that work for me, and make me happy. I hope one or two of them appeal to…

This week has been terrible. The political scene is awful, there have been too many shootings (meaning “greater than none”), I have member of my family who are unwell and unlikely to get better, the owner of my favorite soccer team died in a helicopter crash…there just hasn’t been much to talk about that isn’t either sad or outrageous. But…when we were cleaning out our storage room at the apartment, we decided to toss the old 10 gallon snail tank. It had been empty for about 6 months, but there were still bit of dirt and snail poop in it. When I was about to toss it into the chute, I found a tiny snail shell that had been lodged in a crevasse. It felt thin and dry and very worrying. So, I took the shell back to our apartment, but the shell in a little ramekin, and added a little bit of water because you just never know with snails. They’re tougher than you’d think sometimes. And, wouldn’t you know it, the little gastropod came right out: I felt better about this one little fighter’s survival than I have about anything I’ve done at work in years. I don’t know what that means, but I’m just grinning ear to ear over this snail. Most of the lettuce leaf got monched and they’ve joined the other snails in the big tank for what we hope will be a long and happy life, inasmuch as the term “happy” applies to snails (and I like to think that it does). In other snail-related news, we’re having a pets-in-costumes contest at the office this week. There aren’t many off-the-rack snail costumes out there, so my limited crafting abilities were put to the test. Plus, getting a snail to pose for a photo isn’t a sure thing, but fortunately, Baby Blink was up to the task: I’m reasonably sure we won’t win the contest, but a lot of people got to see our lovely Blink being a show off and I’m happy enough with that. Snails are such good little critters. They don’t harm anyone, they get along with each other, and there’s something very peaceful about the slow pace at which they live. When people can’t be bothered to be decent to each other, and when horrible things are happening to people you care about, spending a little time with snails takes some of the edge off. -RK

Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness is one of the most ambitious 200-page books I’ve ever encountered. It’s fascinating, eye-opening, and a little frustrating. Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher (please don’t stop reading now, he’s not that kind of philosopher) with a strong background in science who’s given us a book that is about the evolution of consciousness, the various theories of how to determine whether or not a creature in fact has consciousness, and how all of this applies to the octopus. The frustrating part is that there’s no way to cover all of that ground sufficiently to satisfy my curiosity in just 200 pages. The evolution of nervous systems and the theories as to how, where, and why consciousness arose are the meat and bones of the book. We’re reasonably certain now that cetaceans and birds exhibit behavior that indicates consciousness, but in terms of evolution, they’re all pretty close to where we are on the tree. All of the chordate nervous systems evolved in much the same way, so as unknowable as crows and whales are to us, they not put together that differently than we are. That brings us to the octopus. Their branch of the evolutionary tree of life diverged from us quite some time ago. Their nervous systems, which are incredibly extensive, are nothing like our own. Nonetheless, the octopus behaves in ways that indicate consciousness. When you’re face to face with an octopus, you’re as close to encountering an alien mind as you’re ever likely to come. The cuttlefish also gets a good deal of time in the book. They’re a relative of the octopus, and their behavior is perhaps less indicative of consciousness, but there’s enough there to leave the question open. And here’s the weird thing: The cuttlefish nervous system evolved completely separately from that of the octopus. So these unusual, extensive nervous systems evolved separately three times: In chordates, in the octopus, and in the cuttlefish. Would I recommend the book? Oh hell yes I would. If you’re remotely interested in any of the subjects touched on above, you’ll probably love it. Just understand that it will likely leave you feeling unsatisfied in that you’ll want to know more about pretty much every subject Godfrey-Smith touches on. Also, if you’re anything like me, you won’t feel so good about eating octopus. -RK

A month or so ago, Nicole and I were driving to the HEB on 51st and we passed a pizza joint called “Pieology”. I’ve never been there, but I know that it’s one of those “make your own pizza” places, sort of like a Mongolian BBQ of pizza. For some reason, a jingle popped into my head: “Make your ownpizza at Pieology.If it sucksyou won’t get an apology.Coz you’re the one who made it…You’re the one who made it…SUCK!” I’m not certain precisely why, but it was ridiculously catchy. I’d find myself humming it. I’d catch Nicole humming it (usually after I did, but still…). So, I decided to record it. This turned out to be the most challenging thing I’ve recorded so far. It required a catchy, swinging drum line that I could have easily recorded using the Beatstep, but for some reason I used the motion sequencer on the Volca to do it and eventually figured it out. And then I found out that the sequencer doesn’t actually save the motion after you turn it off(I had to hit the “stutter” knob at exactly the right time to get the beat I wanted), so I had to do it again and record it immediately. This being a short jingle, there’s really not much to it…unless you’re a hopeless TMBG fanboy and feel like you need horns, strings, bells, drum fills, and, for some reason, a synth solo. It was a weird recording. Normally I do a rhythm track, then record all the parts all the way through the song. This was more a matter of recording two-bar parts for each instrument and then copying-and-pasting them to the part of the song where I needed them. Not my normal process, but it worked OK. My highly-professional system of charting the tracks. Then there was the matter of vocals. I am not a singer. When I sing, people usually think I’m trying to do a parody bad singing. Then, when the truth hits them, they give me a look that says “Aw, it’s great that you tried.” I played World of Warcraft for 8 years without ever speaking on my guild’s channel because I am just that microphone-shy. So I bought a mic, a cheap condenser. Then I had to, um, sing. I wound up double-tracking the vocals and discovered that a little equalization works wonders, but I would still describe the end result as “I get what you were going for” as opposed to “good”. It was fun to give it a shot, though. Anyway, the next step is to send the jingle, unsolicited, to the folks at Pieology. Nicole insists that the right way to do this is to transfer the jingle to cassette tape and send it over snail mail She’s more romantic than she let’s on. Having thought it over, I think she’s exactly right. Of course, I don’t have a cassette recorder, but hey, what’s one more electronic toy? So, here in all its glory, is the Pieology jingle I wrote: And, for the sake of completeness, here’s the full version which is more of a short song than a jingle: I don’t expect I’ll be doing anything like this again, but it was a lot of fun to do and maybe I’ll finally get this jingle out of my head. Probably not, though. -RK

I can’t sleep tonight because our country has gone mad and that sort of thing upsets my sensitive soul. I’ve been trying to avoid talking about the state of the state, but I don’t see any way around it tonight. It’s too much. So yes, this is yet another outsider commenting on the sad farce that took place in our nation’s capitol yesterday. If that’s not your thing, feel free to move along. I’m going to start by asking you to suspend disbelief here. For the purposes of this initial discussion, I’m going to propose that, in that very narrow matter of whether or not Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court, it does not matter whether or not Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations are true or not. Kavanaugh did enough to disqualify himself that, even if you were to find his denials credible, there is no reasonable way to draw the conclusion that he should be confirmed. Bluntly speaking, Brett Kavanaugh lied during the hearings in such an obvious fashion that no one could credibly claim otherwise. His lies were insulting and unmistakable. The word “boffing” has an accepted meaning, and that meaning is not related to passing gas. “The devil’s triangle” is not a drinking game. Labeling yourself a “Renate Alumnius” is not a way to honor a friend you “hang out with”. His explanations for these things were a slap in the face to the whole process. These are the kind of lies you tell when you don’t respect your accuser or the people who are going to vote on your confirmation. Everyone knew he was lying, and he didn’t care one bit. Everyone who votes for him today (and I fully expect him to pass committee and be confirmed sooner rather than later) knows that what he was saying was untrue and they don’t care either. It’s a bit much, coming from a man who fervently believed that the phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that one” was enough to remove a sitting president, but don’t mistake that for irony. Irony lives in opposition to expectations. This is just crass realpolitik, rank hypocrisy, and precisely what one would expect for a man of Kavanaugh’s ilk. I haven’t even discussed his temperament (volatile and angry) or his partisanship (which calls into question his ability to function as an impartial arbiter on the court), because these, too, aren’t necessary to disqualify him from the job. The bottom line is, regardless of whether or not you accept Dr. Ford’s testimony, Brett Kavanaugh has no business being anywhere near the Supreme Court. Of course, Dr. Ford’s testimony does matter and I can’t imagine anyone watching the proceedings and not coming out of them with a stronger belief that she is telling the truth. Her testimony was immaculate. She provided precision where she could, and was honest as to where she couldn’t. Contrast that with Kavanaugh’s testimony, which was riddled with ridiculous lies and inconsistencies, the vast majority of which had to do with his sexual history. If he couldn’t be honest about what the word “boffing” means, I don’t see any reason why we should presume he was honest about much else. So, yes, I think her accusations are credible and his denials are not. Maybe that’s not fair, but when you lie as easily and as blatantly as Brett Kavanaugh? You lose the benefit of the doubt. I’ll close this out with some speculation about what I see as the meta-thread running through these hearings. When I hear the Lindsey Grahams and Donald Trumps of the vociferously defending Brett Kavanaugh, I don’t hear men who really believe that Dr. Ford is falsely accusing him. I don’t even hear partisan hacks who are going to support “their guy” through thick or thin. I hear something much deeper and darker: I hear men of privilege who genuinely don’t believe that the things Kavanaugh is accused of doing are wrong. I think way too many of these men standing up for Kavanaugh feel personally attacked by the accusations. What I think, and again, I am speculating, but I am speculating with a great deal of “this rings true to me”. These men grew up treating women exactly the way Brett Kavanaugh is accused of doing and they’re thinking “We all acted like that in school, because that’s how ‘men’ act, and this is where we draw the line against women calling what they think of as normal boyhood behavior ‘assault’. I think they feel like, if what Kavanaugh did was sexual assault, then most of them are guilty as well. A reach? It could be. But consider this: They could have withdrawn Kavanaugh from consideration, found another justice fresh of the Federalist factory floor, and very likely got the same sort of candidate without having to go through these hearing. Why did it have to be Kavanaugh? Why was he the line in the sand, the hill to die on? I think, too, that this is why this is such an incredibly important moment for the feminist movement. As unlikely as it sounds, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings have become a referendum on the matter of “boys will be boys” vs. “#MeToo”. It’s white (and let’s not kid ourselves about that) male privilege trying to stem the tide of accountability for their actions. So, if Brett Kavanaugh is ultimately confirmed, not only are we stuck with a lifetime appointment for a mediocre man who has demonstrated amply that he has no business on the bench, it’s a symbolic slap in the face to anyone who has ever been sexually assaulted. They won’t be confirming Kavanaugh because they believe him; they’re doing it because they think he did it and they don’t think he did anything wrong. And that, my friends, is why I can’t sleep tonight.

So, here’s the thing: I feel great, I mean like “the best I have felt in years”, but I’m not sure I understand or trust the reasons for it. The steroids? Sure, that could be it, but I’ve been on a prednisone taper before and it I don’t recall it making me feel anything other than normal. Is it getting over a really scary disease that’s driving me? That doesn’t seem right, does it? Whatever it is, I feel light and energetic and happy and smart and even borderline-attractive. It’s nice. I’ve had a really great weekend, the best-feeling weekend I’ve had in ages. Maybe I’ve had some sort of low-grade ick dragging me down for months (years?) that’s been sapping my energy and making me live in a fog and this knocked the shit out of it and now I’m just back to a normal I only vaguely remembered. Regardless, whether this is the new normal or if it’s just some temporary side-effect of some treatment, I’m enjoying it. I feel more present, too, more capable of concentration. Whether the sky will always be this blue and the wind this soft and the ground this warm or not, there’s not reason not to take a deep breath and just be happy to be right here. (I’ve just been reliably informed that it’s dark out, there’s no wind indoors, and the floors in here are cold. So much for figurative language in this day and age.) One of the highlights of the weekend was a visit to a new bookstore literally across the street from us. It’s not just any bookstore, it’s an Japanese bookstore/office supply store/pop culture extravaganza. It’s called Kinokinuya and it might just be my favorite place to go and give in to all of my wicked consumer impulse urges. I’m trying to think of a good way to properly describe this place and I’m struggling because there’s not really a good point of reference. It’s a big place and the books may take up a third or so of it, making it about as big as the old mall book stores. The are all manner of writing utensils (I have never seen so many mechanical pencils), papers, notebooks, and accessories. There’s an entire Studio Ghibli section because it would feel weird if there weren’t. There’s an extensive selection of anime, plastic figures, plush figures, other toys, pins, temporary tattoos, reading glasses (swoon), and literally countless other ways to separate me from my money. I picked up a little pocked notebook because I’d like to find out if I’m the kind of person that carries one of those around and makes notes on my clever musings and droll observations. I may not be, but it was an excuse to get a beautiful Horizon mechanical pencil. I may not be, but it’ll be fun to find out. Nicole also encouraged me to get a Yamamoto Paper “paper tasting” kit to test which type of papers my fountain pen likes the best. Yes, it’s that kind of place, and I’m not sure how my life was ever complete without it. Shiny aluminum pencil! Oh, and real big spender on that notebook, Ridley… As a kid, I always loved office supply stores because, well, they were fun! I got that same buzz going in to Kinokinuya: I felt like a kid. If you’re in the neighborhood, or you have one in your home town, I cannot recommend it highly enough. We had a little gathering over here on Saturday. The events which took place during the gathering will not be recounted here. If you believe you have heard rumor of any of said events, you are mistaken and that is a hill on which I am prepared to shed significant blood. Nothing of any importance happened, nothing was broken, no secrets were revealed, no, or at least very little, witchcraft was performed, most clothing that came in to our abode left the same evening (and mostly on the same person who originally wore it). It was not unlike most nights in any significant fashion. The food was good. Goodnight and sweet dreams, RK

You know that feeling when you’re skidding out of control, or you blew a deadline, or it’s coming right for you! and you just narrowly avoid taking the hit. You’re unscathed when you could (and probably should) have been a bloodied mess? It’s an exhilarating feeling, that sense of escape, of being back on the upswing. Beowulf Shaeffer pulled out of the spin into the neutron star and can see it diminishing into the GP hull-equivalent of the rear view mirror. That’s where I am now. I’ve gone from being really, really not well to feeling incredible in less than a week. It turns out MRSA was involved, and that’s not one to joke with. My doctor didn’t fuck about and went with the right antibiotics and we killed it dead, but we did so right before things would have become Serious. And now, that sense of release, of escape, of having cheated a deserved fate, plus some 60mg of prednisone a day, have left me feeling like everything is wonderful. My brain has worked better the last couple of days than it has in months. I’m even (gasp) productive at work. Who knew that was even in the cards? This is, of course, not a sustainable model for improving my mood and my acuity. I’m in no hurry to do it again any time soon. My doctor agrees, so we’re working to prevent this going forward and to find alternatives for the steroids, which are marvelous in their efficacy, but they will eventually exact an unacceptable toll. So, yay. I got lucky. It feels amazing. I will enjoy it for as long as it lasts, and do all within my power to ensure I don’t have to be lucky next time.

So, yes, what I posted yesterday was pretty unpleasant, but life isn’t without its pleasures these days. This new apartment we’re in has the most extraordinary views of, well, mostly sky, but it’s a fantastic sky. The living room has an almost 180 degree field of view, meaning that was can see the old airport and the lights of the new airport to the east. We can see the west stand of the football stadium, the tower, and downtown to the south, and the TV towers on the hills to the west.  And we get pretty decent sunsets, too. Google recommended a pretty extreme filter for this, but I think it came out ok without it. While I was basking in this marvelous sunset, Nicole called me to have me take a look at the other side of the sky, which was festooned in rainbow plumage. Again, not a bad view from the porch, eh? This is a relaxing place to live. It still feels more like a resort we’re leasing than home, and that’s not a bad thing at all. I’m sleeping better than I have in years for…well, I’m not sure why, but I am. Maybe it’s orientation of the window in the bedroom with respect to the sunrise, maybe it’s that we’re keeping the room free of felines for most of the day. I really don’t know. Another little “huh” thing: The floors feel so different than those in our old first floor apartment. The solidity of the ground floor tiles, affixed directly to the concrete foundation, has been replaced by something with a little more give. It’s subtle, but it’s far more pleasant to walk barefoot on upper floors.  Oh, and I’m still just a couple of minutes (6, to be exact) walk to the train station, which was a non-negotiable for us. It’s funny to think that, when we first moved near a train station, I expected to ride the train once or twice a week and drive on other days. It’s took maybe two days to become completely hooked on taking the train. After a year or so of riding, started carrying books to read as a way to alleviate the stress of checking email and because I like reading books. That initiative has worked out swimmingly. It’s “found time” that I’m fortunate enough to have and to put to good use. Which is all a long way of saying that, in spite of the fact that I look like a troll (which is a slight improvement on “Deadpool”) and that I have a chronic condition the cure for which is nowhere in site, things really aren’t bad. I appreciate all the support I received yesterday when I was writing about the worst of things; I just wanted to let y’all know that pretty much everything else? Pretty darned good. -RK

Let’s start this one off with a content warning for body horror descriptions.  I was going to make this a P.S., but I wanted it right here at the top of the post: Nicole has been a goddamned angel of mercy this weekend. She’s taken such incredibly good care of me and taken care of all the house things and even prodded me when I wasn’t doing the best thing for myself. The fermented cabbage juice/probiotic was a bit much, but in the big scheme of things, it does nothing to reduce my gratitude. She loves me, even when my face is such a mess. I’m terribly lucky. For those of you who haven’t followed my general well-being with rapt attention, good on you. I’m presuming you have a rich, full life that in no way involves memorizing the peculiar ailments of strangers. However, a little bit of backstory is required for this to make any sense, so bear with me. I have a Skin Thing. I can’t put a proper label on it as three doctors have yet to make heads or tails of why my skin will just stop being skin and start being a collection of portals linking the dermis with the outside world. It started happening years ago and all we’ve determined with any certainty is that, while I am allergic to p-phenylene diamine, that alone doesn’t explain what’s going on. The allergist says it’s a skin condition. The dermatologist says it is likely one or more allergies. The GP’s guesses are best left unsaid.  The other thing is that my condition goes away for about 2-3 months after getting a steroid shot. So, that’s what I’ve been doing to keep it in check. This past Tuesday, I went in for my shot which is by now a routine. Wednesday and Thursday, I felt unusually warm and had started to develop tiny bumps on my elbows. By Friday evening, both arms were covered, as was my trunk and parts of my legs. More worryingly, my face had some of those tiny bumps and was slightly swollen. Saturday was bad. By Saturday, my face resembled Deadpool’s -swollen, bumpy, seeping, and….yuck. I contacted my dermatologist, who, suspecting a bacterial infection (steroids leave you prone to infections), put me on a pretty serious antibiotic; the kind you take with a meal every 12 hours like clockwork.  Today was….worse. The whole of my face was covered in seeping gunk and the tried bits of it after they’d done their seeping. It was bad enough that I contacted my doctor again with one of the most appalling selfies I’ve ever taken. She regarded it as a Not-At-All-Good Condition and called in a prescription for some prednisone, which is, as they say in the business, serious shit. So here it is Sunday night. I’m not going to work tomorrow for obvious reasons. I’ll be in the doctor’s office by 9 AM-ish after what I expect to be a poor night’s rest. The tide seems to have been stemmed; I don’t see my face or any other part of me getting worse. There’s no improvement, either. The weird thing is that I feel fine. My skin is just garbage right now and I do not feel pretty.  P.S. I’d intended to turn my enforced housebound state into some overly dramatic, sentimental music but alas and dammit, my audio interface seems to have completely stopped doing anything beyond powering up. My computer doesn’t recognize the USB connection, and none of my instruments can make the line-level lights dance at all. It’s under warranty, or it would be, had I registered it. We’ll see what Behringer has to say about it. Maybe there’s a magic reset switch, but I doubt it. Of all the soul-destroying events of the weekend, this was probably the worst. I just wanted to sit in front of my shattered interface and mumble “It’s not fair….it’s not fair.” Oh well, at least my glasses still work.

I’ve found it difficult to write while we’re in the process of moving to a new apartment. My brain, body, and whatever evil little bit somewhere inside me that compels me to spill out what’s going on in my life in this increasingly-archaic fashion haven’t been in a state that allows me to sit down and write about it. I’m trying to steal little bits here and there when I can jot things down, but I’ve found that I’m seldom able to make sense of my notes, so here it is in one go.  It turns out that I don’t enjoy moving. It’s a cataclysmic event that feeds me nothing but stress before, during, and…well, ok, not so much after, but you get the idea. It wrecks me physically and mentally and I may not be the dynamo of energy I used to be. I’ve heard about people who will pack and move your stuff for you, but that seems like an unthinkable luxury reserved for people who have made much better life decisions than I have. That said, the new place is awfully nice. We’re at the top of the not-especially-tall-but-still-the-tallest-building-in-the-area, so we get a great view, especially since the living room offers nearly 180 degrees of windows. It doesn’t quite feel like home yet, but it’s getting there. I think I’m gonna like it. The view from my desk ain’t bad. I’ve just finished reading Henning Mankell’s Sidetracked, which was an absolutely delightful read about a serial killer and the policeman (Kurt Wallender) who is trying to stop him. The plot is fine, I suppose. I don’t really read that much crime fiction and that which I do, I don’t read for the plot. The writing, and most especially the characterizations, are what make Sidetracked such a page turned.  I’ve determined that what I really enjoy about crime fiction is the writing. It tends towards sparseness, but not in the “I’m going to be an ass about it” way that Hemingway and, sometimes, Cormac McCarthy write. There’s not much else that tie Hammett, Chandler, and Mankell together: Hammett is the more playful of the three, Chandler starts out obviously influenced by Hammett but finding his own, more philosophical voice, later on. Mankell is several generations removed, but his style is recognizably similar to his predecessors, but it’s more…human? Wallender is grumpy and makes mistakes.  Anyway, the lot of them are great fun to read even when I struggle to care about the crimes they’re solving. I’m late to the party on this, but Google Cloud Print is pretty magical, isn’t it? I needed to figure out a way for Nicole to print to an old Brother printer from her iPad and it took something like 15 seconds to set up. That seems wrong; the central tenet of IT support is that printers are awful and difficult to share. This particular bit of functionality seems like it should be getting a lot more attention than it has. I have a lot more, but it’s not bubbling up to the surface right now, so I’ll leave you with this. Lasagna is amazingly fun to make when you stop worrying about what a lasagna is supposed to be. We made a sorta-lasagna last night that I’m reasonably sure would earn me a failing grade from any Italian chef worth their while, but ya know what? It tasted great. Don’t like ricotta (and I don’t)? Don’t use it! You want to make it with green chiles, chicken, and Alfredo sauce? Go for it! There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m not about it. I mean this literally. Don’t let any bossy people tell you what a lasagna is supposed to be because, if you make it the way you like it, it’ll be awesome.